\$\begingroup\$Precisely. +1 Except I would call the routine e.g. sortByMerging instead of mergeAndSort, as the 'and' in the latter suggests sorting is done after merging.\$\endgroup\$
– CiaPanMar 22 '17 at 12:46

The divide and conquer paradigm is based on recurring into subproblems: take a problem, divide it into a few (typically: two) smaller subproblems, solve each of them recursively, then join/merge results.

What you do is: split the problem recursively into a large amount of elementary, trivial problems, then iteratively pick them by pair, join and push back for further joining. It doesn't quite fit the template of 'divide – solve recursively – join solutions'.